Protected Lifestyle - External Fund Range

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The external fund range was added to Protected Lifestyle in December 2014 to offer new investment opportunities outside of the internal protected fund range.

We were aware that to help you meet your client’s protection needs, we needed to offer more than just the limited internal range. Like our new business protection policy, LifePlan, the external range available to Protected Lifestyle has to operate within a specified volatility ratio. This attempts to marry steady growth with above inflation returns, and whilst there are no performance guarantees, we believe these funds significantly enhance the Protected Lifestyle proposition for existing clients.

Clients who wish to invest in the external range, can only do so, by switching fully out of their internal protected funds. They cannot hold internal protected funds and external funds in their policy at one time. In addition, once they switch out of protected funds, they will only be able to switch into other funds within the external range. They won't be able to invest in the protected funds again.

There's our Investment Guide, Fund Performance Bulletins and Factsheets, all updated regularly to provide you and your client with up to date details of the options available and how they are performing.

Fund charges

There is a bid/offer spread on the external fund range (with the exception of the GBP/USD/EUR Cash Funds) for purchases ands switches. This means units are bought at the offer price, and are valued in a policy at the bid price. The bid price is 2.5% lower than the offer price. There is no bid/offer spread on the GBP/USD/EUR Cash Funds.

External fund Annual Management Charges (applied by the fund manager and already included within the fund price) range from 0.2% up to 2% depending on the fund type.

Other than the bid/offer spread, clients can move freely between external funds without any switching charges or custodian fees applying. And your clients can also hold funds that are denominated in a different currency to their policy currency, if required, something which is not possible with the internal protected funds.